


Family Name

by bythedamned



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-09
Updated: 2010-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bythedamned/pseuds/bythedamned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean hates Sam's old nickname for him. Or, he says he does, and that's just one more thing Sam can't get right. A fic about getting along, now that they're back on the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Name

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: mid S1  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, none of it.
> 
> Many thanks to my marvelous beta [elveys-stuff](elveys-stuff.livejournal.com)

Sam had been Sammy since the beginning, since before Dean even knew there was a Sam and that Sammy was just his family name, like kiddo or sweetheart. And Sam had been fine with that, right up until he’d spent half of sixth grade in the same school in Mississippi and some farmer’s son had whispered it when he pushed him over.

“It’s Sam,” he’d whined, even when they were just watching TV in the motel, like he didn’t understand the difference between family names and stranger names.

They fought about it whenever the heat made them grouchy, or the boredom had set in for too long, but Dean never actually meant it when he promised to stop. There were some things big brothers were entitled to, and that was one of them.

Besides, the real issue wasn’t that name. It was Sam’s handle for Dean that had the hotel manager asking them to keep it down or he’d call the cops.

Dean had let it slide when they were little, either because it was funny or because Sam didn’t know any better. But then Sam had started using it when he threw his snits, tossing it right back at Dean when he complained about his own nickname.

“I’m not a kid anymore, Bean.”

Sam had been twelve, and sneered when he said it, so Dean had shoved one finger into his scowling face and told him if he ever called him that again he’d tell the next school Sam’s name was Leslie. That shut him up real fast.

Over the next few years, it wasn’t that they drifted, but that Sam was fighting with Dad more, and Dean no longer fit into the idea of normal that Sam so desperately craved. They still grabbed sodas after school, when they were in school anyway, and curled up on a shared double bed even when Dad was away, but there were familiarities that got dropped. Sam stopped showing Dean all his test scores or asking him to teach him a new weapon, and little things like Saturday morning cartoons and comfortable nicknames were dropped by the wayside.

Sam only dared to pull out his nickname one other time, in the summer before he turned eighteen, on the day he’d realized he was finally the tallest. “Who’s the little brother now, Bean?” he’d said, like just because he was taller Dean couldn’t beat his ass into next Sunday anymore, but a fat lip and minor concussion had shown him the error of his ways.

That fall had brought Stanford and, with it, the end of any communication, fighting or otherwise.

Sam liked being on his own, obviously thought he was well suited to it, but Dean didn’t because it only made him surlier. And then, well… Jess.

So then they were just two brothers on the road, Sam and Dean, and Sam still bitched when Dean had the occasional family name slip up, but just like always Dean didn’t care. That fight was like playing Go Fish, or the license plate game, and more than anything it just settled them back into their old routine.

Usually when Sam took issue, Dean would explain that he liked Sammy ‘cause Samantha took too long to say, and Sam would sneer and go nyuk nyuk nyuk and then they’d fight about something else, anything. The weather would do.

Occasionally, though, when Sam was looking a little green around the gills and forgot to put any hellfire behind his threats, Dean would reach over to thump his chest, rev the engine, and get them to the next motel just a little bit faster so Sammy could tank on a real bed again.

The longer they went without finding Dad, though, the more desperate Dean got. He felt like he was burning at both ends, each day just buying time and following twig-slim leads in the hopes that they’d find him before Dean had to admit aloud that he didn’t have a clue anymore. Sam was following him like he used to follow Dad – begrudgingly but deferring to his years of experience – and the only thing more unnerving that than not finding Dad was letting Sam down in the process.

Sam picked up on his reluctance, though, heard the ends of sentences he never finished and narrowed his eyes when Dean slugged back a beer instead of answering his questions, and the silence stretched on between them. More often than not, the radio went uninterrupted for hours, and lately Sam would curl himself into bed when they holed up for the night without even asking Dean to shut the light. The nightmares that would follow were obvious, but even three months after the fact, Sam still wouldn’t talk about the fire at Stanford. Hell, Sam never even admitted to a bad night’s sleep. Dean let it pass for as long as he could, figuring that once they had a solid hope to go by it would work itself out and they could go back to being them again, but after two months of shit luck, Sam’s attitude was really starting to grate.

Dean had been flirting with a gas station clerk named Candy, or Cherry, some stripper name, and Sam really had to pee. He needed the key, though, and they’d gone in to get it and a local map, but Cherry was busty with fuck-me eyes so Dean had bumped getting her number to the top of his priority list. Apparently, Sam couldn’t just gesture for the key or, hell, nab it from under the counter where they both knew it was, and instead had to slam his elbow down next to the box of bic lighters between them.

“Look,” he said, slicing his hand through the air like he could sever their conversation, “I have to pee. If you can fuck in the time it takes me to do that, fine, but then we’re back on the road.”

Then he decided to reach his octopus arm over and fumble around for the key, and stomped off to the bathroom. Bitch.

Candy said she wasn’t allowed to break til noon, and Dean stewed in the Impala, angry and now horny, until Sam and his silent funk got back in the car too.

At a podunk motel somewhere in the middle of Alabama Dean decided he’d had enough of Sam’s shit, and so when Sam dismissed him with a turned back for the thousandth time that week, Dean grabbed his shoulder and demanded, “What is your beef, man?”

Sam tried ignoring him even then, but Dean managed to grab the back of his collar, yanking it, and choking Sam in the process. Barely. What was the big deal?

Sam flipped, though.

“My beef? What do you think my beef is?” He glared at Dean from four inches above him, moody and cryptic as ever, and Dean just wanted to slug him back onto the bed so he had to look up at Dean for once, damnit. Dean had been shouldering the responsibility for years, fucking years, and the least Sam could do was not be a snotty preteen about it.

“I don’t have a clue, Sam. Unless you broke a nail back in October and are waiting for it to grow back, I’ve run out of ideas. But I’ve been working my ass off trying to find Dad’s old contacts, picking leads out of his journal, and all the while I’ve been hauling your whiny ass along for the ride. So, honestly, no, I don’t know why you’ve gotta throw a bitchfit in the middle of it all.”

“That,” Sam said, stabbing a finger into the air between them. “That is my problem. You keep treating me like some tag-along kid. I’m not a child anymore, Dean. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me whatever big secret you’re keeping for weeks, and you keep telling me you’ve got it covered like that’s actually an answer.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean huffed, “wouldn’t want you to realize how hard this life really is without Dad to coddle you.”

Sam’s angry stare shifted to something colder. “Dad didn’t coddle me.”

“The hell he didn’t. You had it the easiest and you still bailed.”

Dean regretted it as soon as he said it. He hadn’t meant to go there, to bring that into it. That was years past and, though it would always still be there, time had proven that facts were unyielding to wishes. But the words were out there now, and they had the same effect on Sam they always had. He could see him retreating, looking anywhere but at Dean and folding in on himself like an anemone he’d poked too roughly.

He dragged a hand roughly down his face, sounding truly haunted. “I’m here, Dean. Doesn’t that count for something? I may not remember the Lawrence fire, but I can still see J—”

He broke off and looked away, craning his neck and then opting to turn fully. Dean knew he was trying to pull his shit together, to clamp down his own haggard demons until his face was unreadable again, but Dean had been waiting for that dam to break for weeks. Months, even. He wouldn’t push, not now, but he didn’t want this Sam to close himself back up again. He may not be very good with that kind of stuff, but you could always tell hunters that had swallowed down their own tragic origin stories by the hollow, blank look in their eye. He’d be damned before he let that happen to Sam.

With one loud footstep that made the floor creak under the thin carpet, he stepped up behind his brother and said, “I know, Sammy. It’s okay, I know.”

Sam’s shoulders rose and tightened, and after a long breath he turned back to face Dean. His eyes were tight, but dry.

“I’m not Sammy anymore.”

“Aw, come on. Don’t be like that.”

“No,” Sam said, without wavering. “I’m not that kid anymore, and I don’t know why you won’t drop it. I listened when you vetoed Bean.”

And suddenly, Dean wanted to hit him again. He looked him square in the eye and said, “No you didn’t, you just stopped caring.”

Sam’s eyes went wide, surprised and defensive, and Dean realized this conversation had run its meter. His only pit stop on his way to the door was the fridge, where there were six bottles of Killian’s and they were all coming with him.

Since drinking was in the immediate future, Dean just parked himself against the trunk of the Impala, facing out into the night sky and away from motel room. He opened up beer number one. He had no idea what Sam was doing, but the six pack was more than half empty and lopsided when he finally saw the angular spill of light from the motel door.

Sam leaned against the opposite edge of the bumper, as far away from Dean as he could, and stared along with him. There had been nothing left in the fridge for him to grab, and Dean could see him shoving his hands in his pockets awkwardly.

Eventually he said, “I don’t even know how you got that name,” and Dean snorted.

He didn’t answer immediately – finished off his beer and opened another one first – and he kept his eyes trained on the bright field of stars when he spoke.

“Was your first word.”

If that surprised Sam, he didn’t let it show. The silence was heavy as the threat of snow, and before it got so thick Dean didn’t think they’d be able to hear through it he huffed out a sharp breath through his nose.

“Dad thought it was just baby talk, until I picked you up and you said it again.”

It hadn’t just been the once, either. Dad had been pouring through some occult book, but at the sound of something that sounded like a word, he’d sat himself down on the edge of the bed where both his sons were laying.

There was no space or patience on the road for a crib, and Dad had taught Dean how to build a barrier of pillows and blankets on the bed so baby Sammy couldn’t roll himself off. Often times, Dean curled himself around it like a half moon to watch Sammy gurgle.

“What’s he sayin’?”

Sam had started making fussy noises when the bed shifted, and Dean put out his pinky for Sammy to grab in tiny, plump fingers. “Bean,” Dean had told his father, who’d just shaken his head.

“Probably just gibberish.”

Then he’d moved back to the small round table with all his research, but when Dean had made to follow him Sam’s chubby arm shot up and he began chirping bean bean bean until Dean had scooped him up from his makeshift bed and bounced him.

It had been Sam’s first word, and one of Dean’s first memories.

If Sam had any thoughts on that now, though, he still didn’t say. He just leaned over, snagged the second to last beer, and shifted his weight more comfortably against the bumper of the car that had been there when he wasn’t.

Winchesters were, by design, crap at apologies and hashing things out with anything other than their fists. The only real fight they’d had when Sam left for California was over which duffle he should take. And the monstrous fight they’d had back in 1994, over who had eaten the last moon pie but escalated into Sam accusing Dean of starving him to death on purpose, had been on the ten year anniversary of their mother’s death. Their yelling had lasted for over an hour, but by the time Dad got home and admitted that he’d chucked it at a leprechaun, of all things, the boys didn’t even lift an eyebrow, all their anger and grief and mistrust long spent.

They’d only learned apologies in the languages of beer and pie, so when Sam nudged the six pack with his toe, scraping it across the frozen asphalt and offering Dean the last even though it’d been Sam’s cash they used to buy them and he’d already had four while Sam’d only had the one, Dean decided to let things rest for the night. They listened to the wind snapping dry branches in the chilled night air like they’d done enough times before that Dean could almost pretend they were back to normal.

Whatever that was.

Sam still didn’t want to talk about Jess, and Dean hardly ever brought it up because whenever he tried, Sam’s eyes would snap to his, hurt and so very young, and it was explaining to him why they didn’t have a mom all over again.

Dean didn’t think he could keep reliving that and keep his shit together at the same time, so he didn’t push. He made Sam cop to the nightmares though, and would toss a pillow across the cramped motel room so that it’d thump onto Sam’s legs and he’d at least wake up instead of seeing the dreams through to the end. Sometimes, when realizing the room he was in hadn’t erupted in flames didn’t slow his breathing as much as Dean would have liked, he started talking. Nine AM or five, it didn’t matter, he’d just start talking. About truck stops and bar fights and vivacious gas station attendants who had been able to take their break early, anything fast-paced enough to divert his attention for even a moment, and when he finally heard Sam’s light snores he took them as thanks.

And though it made no sense that Sam’s shaky nod of acknowledgement in the mornings put him at ease, like somehow it was Sam who was doing him a favor, he still slept a little better, let his guard down a little more, trusted his brother to handle a few more things.

He let Sam handle the maps, dropping everything from Nevada to Maine unceremoniously in his lap and saying “Get us to the potato state, Sammy,” before hightailing it in whichever direction he was already pointed. Usually the wrong one.

Sam didn’t even bother looking up. “It’s the gem state.”

“What?”

“It’s not called the potato state.”

“’Course it is. That’s where potatoes come from.”

Sam stopped rifling through the maps, crinkling them with his exasperated grip. “They come from Washington too, but that doesn’t make it the potato state either.”

“Why do you even know that, you swirly-magnet?”

“Bite me.”

“Bitch.”

It turned out, Sam was better at directions anyway. And he grumbled less about Dean keeping things from him when he always knew where they were going. Most of the time, Dean even told him why. It helped bump his enthusiasm, which Dean wasn’t actually expecting, when Sam could spend the hours in the car theorizing and strategizing, thinking of connections between grimoires and spell books he hadn’t even held in years.

Ultimately, the responsibility still fell to Dean, but he stopped eagle-eying his brother’s back so much and trusted him to hold his own in a fight without Dean there as back up. As much as he ever would, anyway.

And that was why, during a particularly gruesome fight with a banshee that had managed to slip free, Dean signaled silently for them to split up. He took the back door, which led to an open corn field that she was probably hiding in, and Sam trekked up to the road. Sure enough, Dean had guessed right, and soon the banshee was stalking him through the thick growth, knocking her bony arm against the corn stalks like an old cane and making a rattling noise that was seriously creeping him out.

When Sam found him, probably following the screams from when she’d snapped his leg, the banshee had one end of a stalk that she’d sharpened with her teeth three inches into Dean’s stomach like a spear. She was cackling and howling and doing what looked for all the world like a victory dance when Sam finally got a round of salt shells into her.

It was too late for Dean’s kidney though. Or at least, that’s what Sam kept babbling about when he hoisted him up off the trenched ground. It was narrow between the rows of tall crops and since his stomach wound had nixed any idea of Sam throwing him over his shoulder, he’d been forced to haul Dean up like a fireman and side-step his way to open air.

When Dean opened his eyes again, he felt like he’d belly-flopped into an empty pool and broken every bone in his body. Even his skull. The room he was in was thankfully dim, but after a few blinks he could see that the weight against his leg was his brother.

He was much too tired to move, and too comfortably wrapped in blankets to want to, but he did manage a parched, “Hey, Sammy.”

Sam jumped so suddenly he gave himself a coughing fit, but even while trying to get his lungs under control he was fixing the blanket he’d rumpled so it didn’t look like he’d parked his ass there for days.

“Stop fidgeting,” Dean ordered before he closed his eyes and was once again dead to the world.

When he opened them again the room was brighter, and stark white in the thin light trickling through the window. He looked around enough to realize he was in a hospital room before he spotted Sam, asleep in a chair, with his hands tucked under his armpits like he could be his own security blanket.

Dean said his brother’s name, then tried to say it louder, but it wasn’t until he tried to sit up that he conjured all the flames of hell into one tender spot on his side and groaned loud enough for Sam to wake.

“Don’t move,” he said immediately, like Dean hadn’t just figured that out, thank you very much, but the pain eased when he relaxed again and took a few fortifying breaths.

On to the next point of business then. “Why am I in the hospital?”

Sam’s eyebrows did that complicated wrinkled folding thing they did when he forgot to hide his concern. “Do you remember the corn field?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “It’s pretty hard to forget being shish-kabobbed by a dead woman. I mean, why a hospital? You know my ass is too pretty to be ogled by strangers.”

“I thought that’d be the plus side.”

“No, really. I hate these places.”

“Dean,” Sam said with his classic ‘look, I have patience’ tone that tended to make Dean want to try that patience a little more, “she nearly tore out your side.”

“But she didn’t,” Dean pointed out, like that should be the end of it.

It wasn’t, of course, and Dean came up with several more reasons why he should be up to his armpits in beer and skin mags at the motel instead of in a place that had no shortage of rectal thermometers, but Sam had the same rebuke for them all.

“Your kidney, Dean.”

They were so busy arguing that it took Dean more than twenty minutes to realize something much more pressing.

“Sam?”

“What?”

“I can’t move my arms.”

Sam was instantly alert and focused, like a few years in college had actually qualified him to stand in for a doctor, but after he had hovered and poked and made Dean wiggle his fingers and toes he snorted.

“Yeah, well, not everyone can have my natural muscle mass.”

Dean thought about pointing out that Sam’s meatiness was the farthest thing from natural – he paid more attention to his body than any girl Dean’d ever met – but he wanted to know what was so funny first.

“What?”

“Dean, look at yourself.”

“Uh, kinda hard with no mirror, Sam.”

“No,” Sam gestured vaguely and unhelpfully, “look down. Your arms are fine, you’re just…”

Dean raised one eyebrow, preemptively annoyed at whatever it was Sam was making fun of him for, but finally saw what the problem was.

Someone had tucked him in. And not just covers-to-chin tucking, but actually tucked the sheets and blankets around and underneath Dean’s body, mummifying him where he lay. The uneven lumps of his feet reminded him that, oh yeah, he was pretty sure he’d broken a leg too.

Fucking bitch.

Dean was ready to make plans to see that wailing whore put to rest for good, but Sam was still busy having fun at Dean’s expense.

“Watch yourself, Sammy. Keep laughing like that and you’ll piss yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam chuckled, in a so very not way, “but you look—”

Without the use of his arms to back him up, Dean settled for giving his brother the most disapproving glare he could manage from under the his lumpy pillows. “You say snug as a bug in a rug and so help me god I will glue your ass to the toilet seat.”

“Actually,” Sam said with crinkle lines all around his eyes, “I was gonna say you look like … a bean.”

Dean was about to snap at Sam for taking it one step too far, for being a bitch when Dean couldn’t retaliate, but there was something in Sam’s face that made him pause. Unsurprisingly, he looked like shit, skin greasy and yellow and face puffy like he’d finally gotten a few hours of sleep after several days without. His lips were cracked too, but pressed together like he was holding his breath, and he wasn’t laughing anymore. And in his eyes was an expression Dean hadn’t seen in a long time.

He remembered it well, from moments where Sam didn’t care about being younger or smaller because when he asked his big brother if they could stay put this time, the answer just might be yes. That look had outlasted Sam’s awkward angular years and his tolerance for nicknames, because up until he left for college, when Sam had looked at Dean, he’d still had hope.

And that wasn’t something Dean could ever deny him.

So instead Dean sniffed his nose, rolled his eyes, and sighed. “Alright, laugh it up smart guy. Get over here so I can kick your ass.”

As soon as Sam realized he was going to get away with it, he laughed. And not like before, but a real laugh, easy and relaxed, and when he didn’t try to stop the genuine smile on his face, Dean had a hard time hiding his.

Dean tried to shift himself again, but still found his body weak and uncooperative. He guessed so many days of mainlining food through a tube in his arm would do that.

“Hey Sam, how long we been here, anyway?”

Etched frown lines took over Sam’s face once again as he took a deep breath and sat himself back down in the only chair.

“A week, this time.”

“Oh,” was all he said. Maybe the hospital had been a good call after all.

“A lot of that was sedation so you wouldn’t strain yourself. And, oh,” Sam added, with just the hint of a smirk creeping back up, “you’re on muscle relaxants.”

“God damnit, Sam. You couldn’t just say that?”

That was the first night Sam didn’t have a nightmare. And Dean knew because, while he couldn’t vouch for the nights he’d been unconscious, the bags under Sam’s eyes and the stiffness in his back when he stretched suggested those nights hadn’t been very restful either.

Sam slept well through daybreak, and even through breakfast and the morning visit from a very perky nurse named Janice who patted Dean’s good leg a little higher than necessary when she told him he was doing well.

Eventually Dean got bored of waiting for Sam to rejoin the living and turned on the TV. He had insisted they lower the dose on his meds and, while he could now feed himself, he ached all over and needed a distraction. Unfortunately, reaching for the remote was pushing his limit for the day. And when even top volume didn’t wake Sam, though, he hit the mute button and thought of all the ways he could make Sam do his bidding while he had to hobble around like a pirate.

Maybe he could get a parrot.

On his third day of consciousness, Dean was surprised to see that Sam had put together a list of possible hunts for them. Dean assumed it had been while he was napping, which was still pretty much his favorite pastime lately, and instructed Sam to put his laptop on the bed so he could look it over.

Sam had passed all the urgent leads on to Bobby, he said, but had found a few that could wait ‘til Dean was game again. He sat on the edge of the narrow regulation bed, pointing out articles he thought looked promising and why, and Dean had to admit he was impressed.

Silently, of course.

He was also surprised because while Sam had done nothing before but harp about how their hunts were pulling them farther and farther off topic, not one of the potentials he’d found had anything to do with Dad.

“These all look good,” Dean said, closing the laptop and resting back on his stiff pillows. “If that’s what you want to do.”

Sam met his eye, not getting angry or defensive or any of the countless other reactions Dad usually stirred within him, but calmly and with a level gaze.

“We’re not gonna find Dad, are we?”

Dean balked, hard enough to tense his stomach painfully, and he pressed a hand to his side while he took deep breaths. When he could look up again, though, Sam hadn’t moved. He was just sitting, waiting patiently for the truth.

If there was anything that would make Sammy run, it was that. The truth. Dean had no leads, no chance of finding Dad if he didn’t want to be found, and no way to give Sam the answers he was so desperately chasing. It went against everything in Dean’s nature to rescind that hope Sam had just managed to find again, but he knew that Sam, for once, deserved a straight answer.

He swallowed hard, committing Sam’s presence to memory just in case it was the last moment he had with Sam for a while, and slowly shook his head.

Sam, in response, just nodded like he’d already known, sporting the frown lines that had deepened into permanent fissures since they’d been on the road again. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t go anywhere either. Just weighed down the side of the bed with his hands on his knees, thinking.

While Dean couldn’t follow Sam’s train of thought, he could see that it was moving, speeding Sam through his own private pits of despair until Sam’s face was a mockery of its former self, twisted into agony. He sat, staring in unblinking horror at the floor, and Dean couldn’t bring himself to imagine what images his little brother was seeing instead. He assumed they were of fire, the one Sammy could still smell charring away at the one place he’d truly called home. The one person.

The only movement Sam made was to press his lips together, close his eyes, and take a deep breath. For a moment, Dean thought Sam was working up to his own confession, to some hard truths about what had led them here and how much easier it would be with Dad’s help, to put himself on the line like Dean had. But instead, when even the tight scrunch of his face couldn’t stop his eyelashes from darkening, suddenly wet and shiny, it wasn’t words that came up but a sob.

Sam looked down, again angling his head directly away from Dean, but he knew not to take it personally. That he’d even let himself drift into this waking nightmare in Dean’s presence said a lot, especially when he hadn’t had anyone to share the burden of the truth with in many, many years.

But Dean hadn’t grown up a big brother for nothing, not without learning to carry more than his fair share if it meant his brother was lighter for it. It wasn’t happiness that it brought him, but a sense of peace, of order, and that helped Dean sleep at night as much as the bowie under his pillow.

Without so much as a grunt at the way he strained against his stitches, Dean lumped his pillows together behind him, pushing himself forward until he could reach Sam’s still form. His arms were tensed, locked at the elbows and white-knuckled from gripping the edge of the mattress like it could anchor him down, and they tremorred when Dean rested a hand on his forearm.

Then, with one great shoulder-flexing breath, the tears finally fell fat and hot onto Sam’s jeans, and the cheap linoleum between his boots. He cried the way he had when he was still just Sammy, before he’d learned any self-consciousness or bravado, letting the tears track down his cheeks unchecked in hopes that it’d pull some of the hurt out too.

And just like then, his brother was here now.

Sam’s chest heaved and flexed, keeping the staccato rhythm of his sobs. After a few moments, though, Sam’s knuckles flooded with pink when his grip loosened, when he had his brother to anchor him down instead. When Sam cried as a kid, he used to curl on up the bed they shared, knees tucked up and face toward the wall, and Dean would decide to watch TV from across the room and settle in next to Sam, rubbing his back in circles until he’d cried himself out. That was then, though, and besides Dean couldn’t reach any farther forward if he tried, but the simple brother-to-brother contact seemed to be enough.

Over-eager Janice showed up at the door with a look of genuine concern, but Sam’s back was to her and Dean waved her away unceremoniously, unwilling to let anything get in the way of this long-overdue catharsis. It wasn’t much, but it was progress, and with battles like theirs they would take what they could get.

Dean recognized, idly, how much it said that their best day in months included a gaping stomach wound and Sam’s shuddering sobs, but that was just the way of things when you lived with the name Winchester.


End file.
